Willie Nelson to Hold Aid Concert for Destitute Oil Field Workers

LONESTAR, Texas – Willie Nelson announced today that he is organizing a benefit concert, Oil Aid, to assist oil field workers who have lost their jobs and homes. The event is modeled on the annual Farm Aid concerts that he co-founded and has participated in for nearly 30 years. He has asked John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, and Neil Young, who have worked with him on Farm Aid, to join in. Other artists have been invited, too.

Mr. Nelson remarked that he had difficulty finding a suitable venue for the concert. He said,

Everybody in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and other oil states is too broke to buy tickets so I’m looking for a place that has money but doesn’t hate the oil and gas industry. That pretty much rules out California and most of the East Coast.

I thought about Canadaland, but getting my bus across the border could be tough, except for over there in BC, but that side of Canadaland don’t like the oil industry too much. So I finally settled on Gilley’s in Las Vegas. – Willie Nelson, from inside his Willie-Mobile

The well-known country musician, songwriter, and pothead said that he got the idea from a magazine he read while waiting in his doctor’s office for a refill on his giggle twig prescription. Mr. Nelson continued,

The article described the massive unemployment and hardships that have struck the oil and gas industry. Since the problem hit Texas the hardest and I’m a Texan, I put two and two together and decided to help out. A roustabout or a geologist is no less deserving than a farmer. But I heard about them engineers, though, and they’re a different story.

When this reporter asked for more details on the magazine article, Mr. Nelson produced a copy and handed it over. It turns out he failed to consider that the magazine was in a doctor’s office and therefore unlikely to be current. Indeed, the magazine was dated June 1983.

In today’s world the oil and gas industry is a bright spot in the economy and has remarkably low unemployment, for those who are employed within it.

When this was pointed out to Mr. Nelson he grumbled, “Well, shit. But it’s too late to back out now. I’ve made too many commitments.”

His manager, Ryland Hall, exclaimed, “So that’s why so many people have been telling me to piss off.”